Functional Differences in the Neural Substrates of Auditory Cognition as a Consequence of Music Training

Abstract

AbstractPrevious studies have demonstrated that musical deviants (syntactically irregular chords) elicit event related potentials/fields with negative polarity; specifically, the early right anterior negativity and the right anterior temporal negativity responses with peak latencies at ~200 ms and ~350 ms, respectively, post stimulus onset. Here, we investigated differences in the neural dynamics of the auditory perceptual system of individuals with music training compared to those with no music training. Magnetoencephalography was used to examine the neural response to a deviant sound when the auditory system was primed using stimulus entrainment to evoke an auditory gamma-band response between 31 Hz and 39 Hz, in 2 Hz steps. Participants responded to the harmonic relationship between the entrainment stimulus and the subsequent target stimulus. Gamma frequencies carry stimulus information; thus, the paradigm primed the auditory system with a known gamma frequency and evaluated any improvement in the brains response to a deviant stimulus. The entrainment stimuli did not elicit an early right anterior negativity response. Furthermore, the source location of the event-related field difference during the later right anterior temporal negativity response time-window varied depending on group and entrainment condition. In support of previous findings from research using this, and a functionally similar visual-priming paradigm, a 7 Hz phase modulation of gamma amplitude was found for non-musicians following 33 Hz stimulus entrainment. Overall, significant effects of gamma entrainment were found more frequently in the non-music brain. By contrast, musicians demonstrated a greater range of interactions with slower brain rhythms, indicative of increased top-down control.Graphical AbstractConclusionMusicians’ auditory cognition relies more on top-down processes, while non-musicians rely on bottom-up processing, and therefore, their auditory cognition is facilitated by the entrained gamma-band response.First neural evidence in support of faster reaction-time responses due to an interaction in phase of an entrained gamma-band response of 33 Hz and a slower endogenous theta rhythm (~7 Hz) - consistently reported in previous research.